This invention relates to automatic confirmation of recipient of a personal notification.
It is often desirable to deliver a notification to an intended recipient and then to obtain a confirmation that the intended recipient has indeed received and read the content of the notification. Receipt of such confirmation may be needed, for example, in various legal or safety related applications. In such applications, it may be desirable that the recipient cannot easily repudiate receiving or reading the notification. An example of a notification is delivery of information to an employee that is critical to the performance of that employee's job.
Various approaches to delivery of the notification and obtaining the confirmation have been used in the past. A first traditional approach involves providing the notification in writing to the intended recipient. The recipient then signs a written confirmation that states that he or she has received and read the notification, and returns the signed confirmation to the original sender. The original sender of the notification can compare the signature on the confirmation to a signature of the intended recipient that the sender has previously obtained. This exchange of written documents can be performed, for example, by written mail. Related approached involve other modes of delivery of the notification, such as by electronic mail, web page, or facsimile. In these related approaches, the signed confirmation is then returned in written form by mail or by facsimile.
Another approach, which avoids some of the disadvantages of handling a paper confirmation, uses an electronic delivery approach for both the notification and the confirmation, for example, using electronic mail. In order to verify that the confirmation was sent by the intended recipient, the recipient can electronically “sign” the confirmation. For example, public-key cryptography is used to sign the confirmation such that only someone who knew the private key of the recipient could have sent the confirmation. In other related approaches, the recipient provides a password or other private information, such as his or her mother's maiden name, in a client-server computer architecture in which the server receives the private information from the remote client. For example, a World-Wide-Web (WWW; Web) based application may deliver the notification over the Internet, and the recipient provides private information to the application to confirm that the intended recipient truly received the notification.
In another approach to confirmation, the recipient makes direct contact with a human agent, for example, by placing a telephone call. The agent obtains private information from the recipient to determine that the intended recipient has received the notification.
In some applications of electronic delivery of notifications, a user of a computer system may be asked to view a text notification, such as the terms of an agreement, on a computer monitor, and then to select an “accept” button, for example using a mouse, to confirm that they have read the notification. In some such applications, the user are required to scroll through the entire notification as further evidence that they have read the entire notification prior to being allowed to select the “accept” button.